


Girls

by alitbitmoody



Series: The Family That Finds You [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aunts & Uncles, Dick Grayson is Robin, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Female Friendship, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Supportive Gotham Rogues, Trauma Recovery, and she's the only one trying to be a Normal Teenager, everyone in Enigma's life is a costumed villain or vigilante, family drama in the middle of a Batman comic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2020-07-24 22:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20021806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alitbitmoody/pseuds/alitbitmoody
Summary: The women and girls in Enigma’s life circle the wagons after her abduction.





	1. Babsy

From the second she closed her eyes, she was back in the car. 

Both the back seat of the locked patrol car and the stolen taxi her eleven-year-old brother flagged down (and their parents promptly hi-jacked) during that original escape from captivity. She’s fifteen years old, she’s three years old; staring at the filthy scratched glass separating them from Daddy’s whispered directions) and tipped off-balance, hands restrained by two-tight cuffs, shoulders bracketed by her jacket. A womb of steel and glass, protected and in danger. The combined smell of oily fast food wrappers and kerosene swamped her lungs. The taxi jumped the curb in front of the police station and the patrol car braked suddenly as a body bounced off the back window, finally startled her awake, coughing and hacking as the mattress dipped beside her.

“Etheline? Etheline, it’s okay. You’re home. It’s okay.”

A familiar shock of red hair and blue eyes; warm hands reaching out to take each of her arms as she sat up. She felt her hackles rise as she took in the form of Barbara Gordon seated on her bed, the discarded coverlet rucked up between them.

“Where the hell have you— oh my god, what is _ that _ .”

She felt herself gasp with her entire body as she took in the neon pink plaster wrapped from wrist to elbow up her friend’s right arm, a gold painted thumb poking through to brush soothing strokes across the back of her own hand.

“Yeah,” Barbara nodded, voice soft. “Sorry. I would have gotten here sooner but—“

“What happened?”

“So… long story short: I didn’t actually have homework like I told you,” she started, “...and I wasn’t at the concert with  _ you _ like I told Mom.”

She thought of Barbara’s cagey rejection of the concert invite, the overly elaborate explanation about her new advanced placement course. It made sense in retrospect.

“Shit… okay. Were you with Dickie?” 

A flash of pink turning red high on her friend’s cheeks, lips pursed into a line. Etheline thought of that first class more than a year ago, when Dick Grayson arrived at the school and became a fixture at their lunch period. Friendly enough, occasionally sullen, often diverting from the group conversation to climb a particularly tall tree or balance himself on the edge of a concrete wall. Dad and Papa had disallowed acrobatics from the time she was old enough to run through the green house out back, but Barbara had scaled the wall after him easily. Every time. 

“Oh man! Circus Boy strikes. It took the two of you long enough,” Etheline giggled at the flash of guilt in her friend’s sheepish expression. “Next time you use me as an excuse for canoodling with your boyfriend, at least let me know so our stories match.”

“He’s not my _ boyfriend! _ And it wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like then?”

“...parkour.”

“Parkour?” She smirked. 

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“Okay. I’m not going to interrogate you. I’m guessing you’ve gotten it from all of them already.” The cop, the deposed queenpin, and the night doctor. She didn’t envy that level of scrutiny  _ at all. _

“You have no idea,” Babs sighed. “Also, _ ’canoodling?’ _ ”

“Well, what do you call it?” Etheline asked. “Shared by two, most often to woo--”

“Please don’t.”

“Well, whatever you call it, I’m writing that on your cast.”

“Parkour.”

“Fair enough. I don’t have a pen anyway,” she said, abruptly realizing she had crawled into bed still wearing her pedal-pushers form the night before. “These pockets are purely decorative. It’s obscene.”

“I’m amazed Penguin’s daughter got away with going out in something off the peg.”

“Overruled. And thank god I did. Could you imagine the tantrum if one of my nicer outfits were ruined in...?”

Her throat abruptly closed, not allowing the words to escape. Her gaze shifted to the wall as a cold chill rushed up her spine.

“Etheline?” Babs scooted closer, swinging her uninsured arm around her shoulders to pull her close. “E, I’m here.”

Crying on Babs was moderately less embarrassing than the way she had bawled on Ivy’s shoulder that morning. Possibly because this was in the privacy of her home and not the very public street in one had once been the meat-packing district. Possibly because it was her bedroom, the site of so many mutual tears before -- over parents, police stand-offs, older brothers, younger brothers, and, memorably, one school shooting. A hug from Babs and the creak of ancient bed springs as she rocked her slowly -- a muscle memory as familiar as palming her various trade-offs in the halls at school, as lining up her air rifle with the target out back. 

“Anyway,” she sniffed, swiping at her eyes as she sat back against her headboard. “Enough about my night. You know free running in Gotham after nightfall is a good way to get yourself hurt right?”

“I do  _ now _ , yes,” she said, tucking her arm cast in to rest against her middle.

“After the night you had, I’m amazed you’re not grounded.”

“Well...”

Her answer was abruptly interrupted by slammed door downstairs.

“BARBARA LEE GORDON, GET DOWN HERE NOW!”


	2. Ivy

Pie, Pie, My Darling is cheekily named and appropriately set up on the outskirts, far from the police station and, more importantly, far from Arkham. 

Ivy charms her way to the front of the line at the bakery – coming back to the table with a cruller and an oat milk latte. Etheline loves her favorite auntie every other day, but today is different -- everything heightened and raw, paradoxically overlaid with a hazy remove. She’s in her body and not in her body. When Papa describes "depersonalization"... it sounds pretty damn close to this.

She cries in the bakery, too (much to her continued humiliation). Sobbing and scrambling to mop her face with rough paper napkins, smearing her eye make-up until she can see what looks like a black and gray domino mask staring back at her in the polished chrome around the rim of the table.

She dimly registers her godmother snapping her fingers and calling out to a nearby patron: “You there. Do you like my perfume? Good. Give the girl your handkerchief.”

The pocket square turns out to be a pale blue silk -- soft on her face like water. She smiles at the realization that the color falls within her favored palette. Her aesthetic bends toward aqua, cornflower, indigo, all the cool, vibrant shades between green and purple on the color wheel; always an accent against black velvet, gray denim, or the fixed blandness of her school uniform. 

“Thank you.”

Ivy waves a gloved hand, delicate lace to Batman’s heavy leather. Either way, no thanks needed.

\--  
  
Ivy waits until they're in the car, circling back towards the palisades before speaking again.

“You’re a lot like us. You know that, right?” she smiles. 

Etheline does _not_ know that. She drinks her latte to avoid answering. Talking... hurts. 

“You keep a lid on everything until after the job is over," she continues. "Figuratively, I mean. I never saw your dad cry when he was recovering at my place that first time. He slept most of the time... well, he was comatose so, that's only natural. When he finally woke up, he just spent most of his time shouting and pacing up and down the place in chunky sweaters and girl chucks. But there were no tears. _None._ Not until your papa was on ice. He thought I didn’t see, but I did...” 

Etheline knows about _Before_. Her parents don’t talk about it; at least, not when they think she and Martín are in earshot. It’s filed under ‘R’ for "resolved." Forgiven, forgotten, and all the related players either dead or compelled to silence. Except for Ivy, who never smiles at Papa and occasionally boops Daddy's nose when he amuses her or she wants to annoy him. (Daddy rolls his eyes, but even Etheline knows he would never resist or tell her not to.)

Instead, she zeroes in on the part of that story she doesn’t know about: the image of her bespoke-suited father in something as casual and pedestrian as Converse seems… improbable.

“Seriously?”

“It was the only street kid clothes I had that fit him,” Ivy smirks. 

“Are there pictures?” 

“I wish.” 

The rash of giggles that overtakes her has a slightly hysterical edge and goes on for slightly too long... but it feels good to laugh.

\--

There's a police car parked in the driveway when they finally pull up to the manor. Etheline winces before she can repress it, grips her arms as the nerves shake with a physical memory of tumbling around in the back seat. She sucks in a breath when they get close enough to see the police commissioner's license plate. Ivy grips the steering wheel, eyes blazing.   
  
"It's not him." Not the officer who'd grabbed her.  
  
"I know," she says. The branches of the trees out front rattle and wave without a corresponding breeze. 

“I’d better go in alone.” 

“You shouldn’t have to,” Ivy's gaze is equally steelly, formidable, tinged with an almost neon glow. Etheline registers a distant sound of glass breaking, pictures the greenhouse window she'll be pressed into fixing later.

“We don’t need you dosing Uncle Jim before we know where he stands in all of this.” 

She’s not anticipating a defense of her “arrest,” but if he gives her a lecture about smoking or attracting unwanted attention in a public space… she trusts her parents to keep it together in a way that her godmother will _not._

“That’s the _perfect_ time to dose him!” she protests, but soon wilts under Etheline’s answering stare. “All right... But if you need it afterward, you call me. I love you, petal.”

The hug she gives her stops the tears forming in her eyes (or perhaps she's run out), stops the floral revolution around the manor, stops the world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pie, Pie, My Darling is an actual vegan bakery here in the West Loop. Best name ever.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rather close timeline and, though Etheline's not awake to hear it, Barbara essentially steps around Oswald and Edward cozied up on the floor of the hallway to get to Enigma's room. This is also on a Friday morning, so she is cutting school to be there. Bad Batgirl, no wonder your mother's upset.
> 
> More clues to Etheline's origin in this one, which will warrant at least one more story. Also more mentions of target practice -- Enigma is an expert marksman in the comics.


End file.
